On 5/24/13 4:19 AM, Alan Bourke wrote: > On Fri, May 24, 2013, at 12:09 PM, Ted Roche wrote:
>> > The last round of updates have been migrating from 32- to 64-bit, which >> > necessitates the reinstall. Before that, it was leaving a troublesome >> > printer monitor behind. It's always something. In the long run, I think >> > doing the Freeman is the better way. > It definitely needs to be done every once in a while regardless of OS. > Prepare for immediate dust-off and nuke the entire site from orbit. > Probably a lot easier in the *nix world which is just as well as major > versions appear much more frequently. It is way easier in *nix because configuration files are all text. I can't stress this enough. So therefore, I track changes to my configuration files by committing them to source control. So when its time to set up a new box, I install the base os, update it, install all software, and then clone my set of configuration files, rename the originals to e.g. /etc/bind_orig, and then symlink my source-controlled ones. All my hard work over the years configuring my daemons over the years is leveraged and I have a new system set up in minutes of actual work. Also, you know that whole movement several years back from Microsoft to separate your applications from your data? *nix did that from the beginning. User data is saved in highly-defined, known places that are completely separate from applications. It is really easy to migrate this data to new systems, usually by rsync-ing or tarballing and scp-ing the home directory and various subdirectories of /var/ over to the new machine. All that said, I've been upgrading my Ubuntu box for years, since at least 2008. I haven't found a need to Freemanize. If I wait several releases, I need to upgrade several times instead of once, but if it works it is way easier than starting from scratch. I've been using my MacBook with MacOS as my main system, running Ubuntu in a virtual machine. So when its time to upgrade I take a snapshot of my current machine just in case the upgrade goes south. I think my next laptop is going to be a Thinkpad and I'll probably ditch the virtual machine setup, so going forward I'll need to clone my drive before performing upgrades. Paul _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/[email protected] ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
